


paper and bottles

by ominousunflower



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Miraculous, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Brief Mention of Blood, Epistolary, Lukadrien June, Lukadrien June 2020, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:08:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24962806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ominousunflower/pseuds/ominousunflower
Summary: When Adrien sends a bottled message in the lake where his family vacations, he doesn't expect to get a reply. But he does, and that's the start of a friendship that spans years and distance--leaving Adrien to wonder if he'll ever actually meet the boy behind the messages.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Emilie Agreste, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Luka Couffaine
Comments: 18
Kudos: 169





	paper and bottles

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Day 13 (Bottled Messages) of Lukadrien June.
> 
> Two quick notes: 1) I tried to pick an actual lake for this, but I was worried that no real lake would fit the story elements, and I didn’t want to be inaccurate, lol. So…this story takes place at an imaginary lake in southeastern France. 2) As the tags say, there are no Miraculouses in this universe!

Azure water stretches out in front of Adrien, winding among mountains in the distance, and at eight years old, he imagines that it goes on forever.

Sand slithers between his toes as he tugs on his mother’s hand, pulling her forward until their feet are cooled by the lake. She crouches down next to him, her braid dangling a few centimeters above the water, and hands him the wine bottle she’d rinsed out the night before.

“Alright, little one,” she says, as she holds up the message Adrien has written. It’s tightly rolled, thin enough to slip through the mouth of the bottle, with a pale blue ribbon tied around the paper. “Hold that bottle steady while I put this inside.”

Adrien clutches the bottle in small hands as his mother drops the rolled-up message inside. He’d implored her earlier not to peek, since the message was a secret for whoever found the bottle. She’d simply smiled and ruffled his hair, promising not to look, and told him that she’s sure the message is just as special as he is.

Although Adrien had written the message on his own, he’d wanted it to be perfect—and so he’d run to his parents every few minutes, asking them how words were spelled so that he wouldn’t make any mistakes. At first, he’d asked his father, thinking that he would want to be part of the fun. Although Gabriel answered Adrien’s spelling questions, he did so without looking up from the book he was reading, and it was clear that he wasn’t too interested in the venture. In the end, Adrien checked with his mother instead, and she patiently wrote down each word so that he could copy them for his message.

Now, Adrien watches as she twists the cork back into the bottle, sealing the message inside.

“Where do you think it’s going to go?” Emilie asks, smiling as she brushes Adrien’s bangs out of his face.

Adrien hums and squints at the green bottle. He’d insisted on this color, worried that the blue bottle Emilie first offered him wouldn’t show up in the water. “I think…Toulouse!”

“Well, then,” Emilie says, “let’s hope it finds its way there.”

Adrien wades a few steps forward, Emilie’s steadying hands on his shoulders, and sets the bottle in the water. It starts to float away, then stills, rocked back and forth by the waves.

“It’s not moving,” Adrien says.

“It will,” Emilie says. “It’s just resting.”

Adrien turns to her with a frown. “Bottles don’t rest.”

“Maybe the water does.” Emilie pats Adrien’s hair, then takes his hand and leads him back to the shore.

He glances back at the water as they go, watching his bottle bob in the lake, sunlight glinting off the glass. In the distance, boats swirl about the water, their bright colored hulls and white sails winking in the light.

“What if someone steals it?” Adrien asks, digging his feet into the sand. “Then it won’t get to Toulouse!”

Emilie shakes her head and crouches down in front of Adrien. “No one’s going to steal your message,” she says. “Everyone knows how important it is to leave a bottled message alone.”

“I should watch,” Adrien says, turning to face the water. “Just in case!”

“Your father is waiting back at the hotel for us,” Emilie says. “Don’t you want to get lunch with him?”

Adrien frowns at the water. Every boat looks like a shark to him, an enemy that could pluck up his bottle and swallow it before it reaches a stranger in a far-off city.

“Are you sure no one…” Adrien’s stomach gurgles loudly, and he realizes that it’s been a while since he ate breakfast. “Okay. But I want to come back later to check on my bottle!”

Emilie laughs. “Alright, we will. Let’s eat first, though.”

After lunch, Adrien races down the path to the shore, while Emilie follows and calls out a warning not to trip. He skids to a stop at the water’s edge, sand filling his sandals, and scans the water for any sign of his bottle.

“It’s gone!” he says. He turns to Emilie as she picks her way over to the water. “Is that good?”

“It looks like the water woke up,” she says.

“You’re silly,” Adrien says, because although he doesn’t know _much_ about lakes, he knows that they don’t sleep and wake up. Squinting at the water, he adds, “Do you see it?”

“No,” Emilie says. “I think your bottle is on its way to Toulouse.”

Adrien laughs and cheers, then wraps his arms around Emilie’s waist. “I wonder who will read it!” he says. “I think it will be…a fisherman!’

“Just a fisherman?”

“Who’s secretly a wizard,” Adrien says. “Or a prince or princess!”

“Do they have those in Toulouse?” Emilie asks, a kind smile on her face.

“I don’t know,” Adrien mumbles. “I haven’t been there.”

“Well,” Emilie says. She leans down to kiss his brow. “I’m sure a handsome prince or beautiful princess will find your message and read it to their entire court.”

Adrien closes his eyes as a breeze tickles his face. He imagines that scene: some fancy royal in noble clothes, just like the ones in storybooks, finding Adrien’s message on the shores of Toulouse. They kneel in the sand and pick up the bottle, marveling at the strange object that’s washed up on the sand, and then they read the message, wondering what mysterious stranger wrote such beautiful words.

Maybe they’ll search for him. Maybe they’ll track the message down to the lake, and find Adrien, and thank him for the kind words—and then, of course, they’ll kiss him and ask him to marry them, just like in the movies.

Then Adrien would become a prince. He’s pretty sure that’s how it works.

“I hope so,” Adrien says, opening his eyes. He imagines a hand decorated in gorgeous rings retrieving his bottle from the water. “I’m going to be a prince.”

A bell-like laugh bursts from Emilie’s lips. It’s always been one of Adrien’s favorite sounds, because although he doesn’t always know _why_ he’s made his mother laugh, he knows that he’s made her happy.

“I’m sure,” she says. “You’re as handsome and brave and smart as a prince. All you need is a crown.”

“And a horse!”

Emilie laughs again. “I don’t know if we can get you one of those. But I’m sure we can find a crown somewhere.”

Smiling, Adrien flops down in the sand and stares out at the water, daydreaming about crowns and bottles and princes and princesses.

* * *

Three days later, as Adrien trails a stick through the cool sand and draws shapes in it, he spots something green and shiny at the water’s edge.

“No!” he says, dropping the stick and rushing over to the bottle. “It came back!”

He kneels in the wet sand and grabs the bottle from the water to inspect it. The message inside is loosely-rolled, with no ribbon tied around it—and it’s hard to tell from the tinted glass, but it seems like a word is written on the back of the paper.

Adrien only wrote on one side of the paper, and what’s more, he doesn’t think fish know how to untie ribbons.

“Maman!” he says, holding up the bottle. “Père! Someone sent a message!”

Gabriel watches from a distance, standing back in the grass where he can’t get sand in his shoes. Unlike Adrien and Emilie, he refuses to change into sandals or shorts for walking along the water. “What is he upset about?” he asks.

“Adrien, darling,” Emilie says. She rushes over to him. “Careful with that bottle. You could get hurt.”

“Someone wrote on the back!” Adrien says, as he excitedly hands her the bottle. “And the ribbon is gone. That means it’s not my message. Can we open it and see? I want to see what they wrote.”

Emilie holds the bottle up and squints inside. “You might be right. I’ll take this back to the hotel and open it, and then we’ll see if it says something.”

“It does,” Adrien says. “Can we go back now? Please?”

“You don’t want to spend more time on the beach?”

Adrien shakes his head. How can he focus on the sand or the water, when there’s a mysterious message inside his bottle? He hadn’t expected to get a response so soon. He’d been sure it would take at least a week for the message to reach Toulouse—although he’s still not quite sure where Toulouse is.

Sighing, Emilie straightens her back and turns to Gabriel. “We’re going back to the hotel!” she calls. “Adrien wants to see what the message says.”

Even from a distance, Adrien thinks he can see a frown cross his father’s face. That’s not unusual; his father doesn’t smile much. “Already?” he asks. “Wasn’t he just begging to come down to the water?”

Adrien runs after Emilie as she walks back up to the pathway. “There’s a message for me!” he tells his father.

“We’ll stay at the hotel for the rest of the morning,” Gabriel says. “I don’t have energy for constantly running back and forth.”

“But I have to send another!” Adrien says. They’re leaving the next day, and he needs to get the bottle back in the water before then. Otherwise his new friend won’t know that he’s left.

He worries that even then, the same person won’t find the bottle twice—but he hopes that they will.

“You don’t think someone actually replied to him,” Gabriel says to Emilie.

“They did!” Adrien says. “You’ll see.”

“Let’s check,” Emilie says. Taking Adrien’s hand, she leads him back up the path toward the hotel.

Back in the air-conditioned suite, Adrien sits and bounces on the mattress as Emilie pries the cork out of the bottle. Once she does, he eagerly reaches for the bottle, but she holds it out of reach.

“Just wait,” she says, laughing. “I want to make sure your pen pal didn’t write anything cruel.”

Adrien gapes. “You think someone would do that?”

“I would hope not,” Emilie says. “Let’s see…”

She turns the bottle and dumps the message onto her palm. It’s tied with a rubber band, and Adrien holds his breath as his mother works the band off the paper.

The back says _HI_ with a smiley face, which is good enough for Adrien. Moving fast like his favorite racecar toy, he snatches the paper from her hand and jumps down from the bed, then sprints toward the bathroom door. Emilie has barely gotten to her feet by the time Adrien slams the door shut and locks it behind him, clutching his treasure to his chest.

“Adrien,” Emilie calls. “I didn’t get to read it yet.”

“I can read it!” Adrien says, sinking to the cold tile floor. He unrolls the paper and smiles at the first words: _Hi Adrien._

Muted by the door, Gabriel says something about _behavioral issues,_ but Adrien ignores him in favor of the letter.

Straightaway, he notices that a few words are misspelled, and that his new acquaintance has terrible handwriting—probably not a prince or princess, then. That hardly matters, though, when someone actually responded to his letter.

_Hi Adrien,_

_Sorry, I’m not a prince or a wizard. But I play guitar, so maybe I’m like one of those music guys in fairy tales. Ministers? I forget what they’re called. I’m not very good with words._

_I don’t think I’m really far away like you think, but I won’t tell you where I am. It can be a mistery. Also, I hope you get this before you leave the lake. I’ll be embarassed if someone else finds it._

_Your friend,_

_LC_

Eyes wide, Adrien circles the signature with his finger. _Your friend._ And he almost has the boy’s name! (At least, Adrien assumes it’s a boy, since he’d used the male versions of adjectives.)

“LC,” Adrien whispers.

He reads the message four more times, until he’s practically memorized it, and then he slowly stands and unlocks the door.

“Well?” Emilie says, smiling as Adrien emerges from the bathroom. “Is it good?”

“I need to write another!” Adrien says.

“I assume you won’t include too much personal information?” Gabriel asks. He’s standing in the kitchenette, pouring himself a glass of wine. “I don’t want some stranger using this correspondence against us.”

“Relax,” Emilie says. “He’s just having fun.”

Without waiting, Adrien scrambles over to his bag and pulls out the notebook he’s been using to practice Chinese—after all, even on vacation, he’s not supposed to take breaks from his language studies. He digs around the bag until he finds a pen, and then he sits on the ground and stares at the page.

He won’t be able to respond to LC after this, since they’re leaving the next day, which means that he needs to tell him as much as possible. Of course, there’s a chance that the message won’t even reach LC a second time…but the water returned the bottle to Adrien once, so it makes sense that it can deliver the bottle to LC again.

Grinning, Adrien uncaps the pen and starts writing.

_Dear LC,_

_So, I’m going back to Paris tomorrow, but I’ll be back next summer…_

* * *

_Dear Adrien,_

_I’m sorry this is a year late, but I don’t think the lake delivers bottled messages to Paris. The good news is that I had a year to make sure I spell everything right._

_I_ _like cats, too. My family lives on a boat, so we don’t have any pets. I hope your dad lets you get a cat. Or maybe you have one now? I guess it’s been a year since we talked._

 _You_ _sound really talented. I speak English because we have family in Scotland, but I don’t know Spanish or Chinese. And I play a bit of piano, but I can’t play etudes or stuff like that. I mostly play guitar._

 _Did_ _you start fencing in the fall like you said you would? I don’t think I’d be good at that. I hope you’re enjoying it._

_Also, you have nice handwriting, and you sound really smart. My messages probably seem boring to you. I don’t think I have interesting things to say, but thanks for talking to me._

_Your friend,_

_LC_

Adrien smiles at the message in his hands, the bottle lying forgotten in the sand beside him. He hadn’t expected to hear from LC ever again. A few minutes ago, though, as Adrien was walking along the shore, he’d spotted the familiar bottle gleaming in the water. His mother had yelled at him to be careful as he rushed into the lake to retrieve it, but then she’d hung back, giving Adrien space to read the letter by himself.

He mentally files away the new facts he’s learned about LC—especially the fact that he lives on a boat. Adrien has seen houseboats in Paris before, but he’s never met anyone who actually lives on one.

Adrien doesn’t understand why LC thinks he’s boring; he’s captivated by every single word LC has written in that slender, slightly-slanted handwriting of his. (It’s much neater than LC’s last message, but then, LC had a year to write this one. He probably took the time to make sure his penmanship was good.)

He wishes he could meet LC. Since last summer, he’s had dreams where LC comes to Paris, meets Adrien, and becomes his best friend…because of course, that’s what would happen if they ever met. In the dreams, Adrien shows LC to his favorite parts of the city—not that he has many favorite parts, since he mostly stays at home—and the two of them explore Paris, go on adventures, and meet wizards and giant cats and princes and princesses.

Still, there’s something magical about the fact that Adrien and LC can communicate via bottled messages. Adrien had heard his father muttering earlier about how it wasn’t possible, and how the message-writer is probably some crook trying to trick Adrien—but Adrien knows better than that. LC is real, and he’s Adrien’s friend.

Adrien runs back up to the grass, bottle clutched in one hand, paper in the other. “It’s the same person! He wrote me another letter.”

“That’s wonderful,” Emilie says. She plucks an olive from the picnic basket they’ve packed. “What did he say?”

“It’s a secret,” Adrien says. “But…” He leans forward and whispers, “He likes cats, too!”

“How nice,” Emilie says.

“Another forty minutes,” Gabriel says. “Then we should go back to the suite. Adrien needs to practice piano for at least an hour.”

Adrien sighs. He’d rather spend time writing another message to LC—especially since they’re only going to be at the lake for a week—but he can’t argue with his father.

He preferred last summer, though. They hadn’t packed a keyboard that time. Now, Adrien has to practice piano _and_ Chinese during vacation.

“I think Adrien can write his letter first, though,” Emilie says.

“Very well,” Gabriel says. “I suppose it doesn’t matter, as long as he practices for a full hour.”

Barely able to sit still, Adrien plops down on the picnic blanket, reading and rereading LC’s message until the words stop looking like words.

* * *

Adrien darts forward with his branch held aloft, shifting it through different fencing positions. The sand slips under his feet, making it harder to perform footwork, but he manages not to fall.

He’s ten, which means he’s been taking lessons for almost two years now. He dreams of showing the moves to LC one day, even though he’s starting to think that might be impossible. LC only exists in bottles and letters; in the spindly handwriting that Adrien knows by heart, where the cross of each T is always slightly slanted and the As are never quite the same width; and, of course, in Adrien’s dreams.

Each summer, Adrien refines his mental image of LC. That first summer, he was tall, blond, with tan skin and sky blue eyes like the princes in Adrien’s storybooks. Then, last summer, LC’s final letter mentioned that he sunburns easily because of his pale skin, and so Adrien revised his mental image, changing LC’s skin tone so that it’s lighter and slightly pink from the sun.

In Adrien’s mind, LC still has blue eyes, but now they’re ocean blue. It seems fitting, when LC comes from the water.

And this summer, Adrien’s received one letter so far, where LC—apparently a year older than him—wrote that he’s thinking of dying his hair. He says he’ll have to bleach it because it’s so dark, and thus, Adrien makes another revision, darkening LC’s hair to an inky black.

Adrien wonders if LC has freckles, or if there’s a tiny gap between his front teeth like the one Adrien had before his father corrected it with invisible braces. (He now models for his father’s brand, and apparently his teeth need to be perfect for that.) He wonders what kind of smile LC has, and most of all, he wonders what his laugh sounds like.

Adrien has considered asking for a picture, but he doesn’t want to shatter the illusion. What’s more, he doesn’t want to ruin the surprise—because he’s determined that one day, somehow, he and LC will meet.

By now, he knows better than to mention that sort of thought in front of his father. He’ll just get dismissed for being fanciful and foolish. His mother, on the other hand, thinks it’s sweet. This past Christmas, she bought Adrien a wooden box, about the length of his forearm, for holding his letters from LC. The keepsake box has water patterns engraved on the lid, and navy velvet lining the inside.

 _Why does he need an extravagant box like that?_ Gabriel had asked, as Adrien marveled and ran his fingers along the ridges of the lid. _Can’t he just put them in a folder?_

 _Hush,_ Emilie said. _They’re special to him._

Adrien still doesn’t know how the lake always manages to deliver the letters. The logical side of his brain—the part that completes math worksheets and reads science textbooks—says that there’s a mundane explanation. The other side of his brain, though, the part that sometimes dreams of princes and dragons and wizards…

That part still hopes that maybe there’s a bit of magic in Adrien’s life.

* * *

The first summer Adrien’s mother collapses, he finds himself praying for magic more than ever.

He’s sitting on a folding piano bench next to his keyboard, his fingers wandering around the keys as he improvises. This summer, in addition to his usual letter, LC sent Adrien a piece of paper covered with hand-drawn staffs and music notes. The lines of the staffs are straight and precise, clearly drawn with a ruler or some other guideline.

And the music is beautiful. As soon as Adrien scanned the bars on the beach, he’d heard the melody in his head; but it’s another thing entirely to hear it out loud, sung by the electric keys of the piano.

Adrien’s sure it would be even more gorgeous if he heard it from the strings of LC’s guitar. He wonders if he’ll ever get the chance.

“That doesn’t sound like Chopin,” Gabriel remarks from across the suite.

“Sorry, père,” Adrien says, fingers pausing. “I—”

Glass shatters behind him.

Adrien jumps to his feet and turns around, nearly tripping over the piano bench. Emilie is sitting on the ground with her back against the cupboard doors, bright blood dripping from her ankle.

“Maman!” he says.

“Emilie!” Gabriel rushes over to her side. “Adrien, stay there. Don’t step on the glass.” He presses the back of his palm to Emilie’s forehead. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” she says, waving a hand. “I got a bit dizzy and fell. There’s no need to worry.”

“Did you faint?” Adrien says.

“Quiet,” Gabriel snaps. “Emilie, you should lie down. I’ll have someone clean this up.”

Adrien tentatively approaches and scans the ground. Crouching, he picks up the largest shards of glass he sees and cups them in his palm.

“Adrien!” Gabriel says. “I told you to stay back. I don’t need to worry about you getting hurt, too.”

“Listen to your father,” Emilie says. “And I’m not hurt, really. I probably just need to drink some water.”

“I’ll get you some!” Adrien says. He carefully steps over the shattered glass and moves to the sink, ignoring his father’s quiet reprimands.

Later, as Emilie lies in bed with the glass of water on the nightstand, she rolls her eyes. “Stop worrying, you two,” she says. “It’s a hot summer, and I’m a bit dehydrated. I’ll be fine after I take a nap.”

Adrien digs his fingers into the bedsheets. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes,” Emilie says. “It’s just from being thirsty. I’ll be fine.”

Adrien glances up at Gabriel, whose tall figure looms over the bed. “Can we go down to the water?” Adrien asks.

“Not now,” Gabriel says. “We’re staying with your mother.”

“That’s nonsense,” Emilie says. “I’ll just be sleeping. You can take him to the beach.”

“I’ll go alone!” Adrien says. “It’s a straight path from here to the water.”

Gabriel scowls down at him. “Absolutely not. You’re not leaving by yourself.”

“He’ll be fine,” Emilie says. “We can see the water from the window, anyway. You can watch both of us from there, since you’re such a worrywart.”

“He can stay here,” Gabriel says.

“I don’t want him cooped up worrying about me,” Emilie says. She turns her bright eyes on Adrien. “Go ahead, Adrien. But make sure you come back for dinner.”

On his way out the door, Adrien grabs a pen and a notebook—and then he runs down the stairs, out the door, and along the path to the water, feeling the breeze cool his skin as he does.

He skids to a stop in the sand, panting. Then he kneels on the ground, sand warm beneath his knees, and begins to write.

_Dear LC,_

_I was playing your music on the piano earlier, but then something scary happened…_

* * *

_…and now my hair is bright blue, which is what I wanted, but I keep getting surprised whenever I look in the mirror. I guess I’ll get used to it eventually._

_I can’t wait to hear about your spring trip to Italy. I haven’t really traveled outside of France before, except for a few visits to Scotland. Maybe you could send a picture of Italy, like you said you might? I’d love to see one. Maybe it would even inspire me to write a song. I mean, you’ve already inspired me to write songs…but those are different._

_Your friend,_

_LC_

Adrien smiles sadly as he lowers LC’s letter to his lap.

The Italy trip hadn’t been nearly as fun as Adrien hoped. It had been for Gabriel’s fashion line, of course, which meant that Adrien spent more time working than he did exploring the city—and when he did explore, of course, he was always escorted by his bodyguard and his father’s assistant.

His mother had stayed home, too exhausted to make the trip. Adrien had wanted to stay home with her, but she’d insisted that he go to Italy and enjoy himself.

He’d gone. But he hadn’t enjoyed himself.

Adrien rolls up LC’s message and slips it into his bag, then pulls out a pen and paper and starts writing. He’s already got a new cork with him, so he won’t have to go back to the hotel before sending out another message.

The suite is suffocating. Emilie has been in bed ever since they arrived the previous afternoon, too tired to get up—and Gabriel has been glued to her side, a silent, tightly-wound presence. He’d barely spoken two words when Adrien asked if he could go down to the water; he merely muttered permission and waved his hand, reminding Adrien to take Nathalie or his bodyguard with him.

And so, Nathalie is sitting on a chair in the nearby grass, inspecting something on her tablet while Adrien writes on the shore.

At twelve, almost thirteen, Adrien has figured out that the bottled messages are probably coming from nearby. For one thing, he’s been sending messages in a _lake—_ which, he’s learned from studying geography, does not flow anywhere near Toulouse. And for another, bottles are not carrier pigeons; they can’t find their way back to the exact same place over and over again.

Someone has been leaving the messages for Adrien, summer after summer, and he wishes he knew who.

Now that he’s almost a teenager, Adrien sort of understands his father’s skepticism. To someone who hasn’t read the messages, it might seem a little suspicious that a stranger waits for Adrien to arrive and then leaves bottles on the shore for him.

But Adrien knows better. He’s been reading LC’s words for years, learning random details about his life, idle thoughts, what he feels in his heart. Adrien knows that LC loves the water—among his reasons, the fact that it led him to Adrien—and that his guitar feels like an extension of himself, the best way to express his emotions when words feel too confusing. LC also keeps to himself, and is quiet, and would probably only write a few sentences in each message, except he knows that he can’t talk to Adrien often. For Adrien, he finds the words.

In turn, LC knows that Adrien loves watching sunrises when the house is still quiet, and giving names to the birds that fly by his window when he’s stuck inside practicing piano. Adrien has told LC the songs he plays, and the dreams he has—the good ones _and_ the bad ones. And LC knows that Adrien spends most of his time locked up in a big, cold house, longing to be free.

Even before Emilie’s health declined, Adrien had always felt this way: that he’s trapped, and there’s a wide world out there, with a thousand sights that he’s not able to see. What other lakes are there? What hills and mountains? What would it be like to stand on top of one and look at the trees below? Adrien has seen pictures and watched documentaries, but it’s not the same.

But on the cusp of his teens, Adrien wants to know more about LC. He wants to know if LC’s fingers are calloused from playing guitar, the same way Adrien’s are rough from fencing. He wants to know exactly how LC’s face looks when he laughs—how much his eyes crinkle, whether he has dimples, whether his laughter is quiet and reserved or loud from the diaphragm.

And he wants to know if LC would try to kiss him.

Not that Adrien wants him to try, because that would be silly. It’s one of those things he’s curious about, but would never actually do—like leaping from a cliff into water, or flipping off the paparazzi when they have their cameras aimed at him.

Adrien wouldn’t fall for a boy found in paper and bottles.

This time, when his pen touches the paper, he doesn’t try to be concise. It’s almost like his first letters at eight years old, when he rambled about stupid things—except now, it’s more personal. This is Adrien pouring his thoughts onto the page: worries, fears, dreams; the things he wants to do with his life, and the family he has, and the family he wants; and the stupid things he’d like to do with LC, like playing music together, and hiking up a mountain, and lying by a campfire as the stars sparkle overhead.

When he finishes, it’s two pages long, the ink smeared a bit in some places where Adrien’s palm smudged it. As he reads over the first few sentences, he hears his father’s voice scolding him. _You shouldn’t send such personal things to a stranger, Adrien. Never share anything you wouldn’t want the tabloids to see._

Adrien’s eyes sting as he stares at the page. He wants LC to know him, truly _know_ him, so badly. LC is probably the only person in the world who isn’t blinded by Adrien’s celebrity; to him, he’s just Adrien, no last name, no famous face.

But maybe this is too much. Maybe LC only sees this as a fun game, and Adrien is just a pen pal he thinks of once every year.

Even as he thinks that, though, Adrien’s gut tells him it’s wrong. LC’s letters always mention memories from throughout the year, random times that he’s seen something or heard something that reminded him of Adrien. It could be wishful thinking, but Adrien thinks maybe LC thinks about Adrien as much as Adrien thinks about him.

And yet, there’s still that tiny fear every summer, when Adrien wades into the water and releases the bottle, that _this_ will be the time that LC doesn’t respond.

“Adrien,” Nathalie says, her voice sharp. He turns and sees her standing behind him on the sand, her tablet packed up, a phone in her hand. It looks like she’s just ended a call. “We’re going back to the hotel to pack up.”

“What?” Adrien asks. “Why are we…”

“We’re going home early,” Nathalie says. “Finish what you’re doing, and then I’ll walk you back to the hotel.”

There’s an edge to her voice—like the sand on the beach that seems smooth, until Adrien steps on a hidden rock and feels the ground prick his feet. He knows something is wrong, though he doesn’t understand what.

Adrien tries to read over the letter, but now his mind is racing, wondering what could be wrong, what could have happened that’s causing them to pack up and leave. The words blur in front of him as if they’re underwater, and he can’t think, can’t process.

Something is wrong. Something is _definitely_ wrong.

He flips the second page over and hastily writes, _P.S. I’m not sure why, but we have to leave early. I’m sorry I can’t stay longer. I’ll talk to you next summer. Or maybe my parents will let me come back sooner so that I can keep talking to you. I’ll ask._

Adrien hesitates, pen tapping dots onto the page. He has a cellphone now, for use in case of emergencies—although his friend Chloé does text him sometimes, usually to complain about her day or ask his opinion on outfits. He could give LC his number, and they could stay in contact that way. Adrien could actually hear his _voice._

But what if LC never calls? What if that piece of Adrien’s “real life” scares LC away? Adrien’s heart will break and never quite heal if LC rejects him like that.

“Adrien,” Nathalie says. “We don’t have time to waste. Are you almost finished?”

“Yes,” Adrien says. In a moment of recklessness, he crosses out his signature and writes _Love, Adrien_ instead. He won’t have to deal with the fallout until next summer, after all. “One minute!”

He slips the message into the bottle and twists the cork in, then wades into the water until it kisses his knees. For a moment, he holds the bottle and stares at it, wondering if he should have said something differently, or held back his innermost thoughts. Maybe what he’s written is too much for someone whose face he’s never seen.

But Adrien can feel Nathalie’s eyes on his back, urging him to finish up—so he drops the bottle into the water and watches it bob with the waves.

He scans the slopes of the hills and the curve of the river, wondering where LC might be. He always manages to find Adrien’s letters, meaning that he must be nearby, but Adrien has never run into any boys his age at the lake.

Then again, he’s never really met _anyone_ at the lake. Adrien’s father always hauls them to fancy events, pricey places, and has never given Adrien a chance to mingle with the locals.

“Adrien?” Nathalie calls.

“Coming.” Adrien turns and makes his way back to the shore, the hem of his shorts damp. As he bends down to pick up his bag, he asks, “Why are we leaving early?”

“Your mother has a doctor’s appointment,” Nathalie says. Her eyes flick down to Adrien’s shorts, and she sighs. “You’ll need to change before we go.”

“Why did they schedule a doctor’s appointment during vacation?”

“It was just scheduled. Come along.”

“Is she alright?”

“She’s not feeling well, which is why we’re going back to Paris. Come on.” Without another word, Nathalie turns and marches back up the hill, leaving Adrien to scramble after her.

At the top, he stops and turns back, praying he’ll see a boy with blue hair swim through the water and find Adrien’s message.

But the water merely sparkles below the sun, the bottle lost somewhere among the glimmer of the waves.

* * *

In May, Emilie tells Adrien and Gabriel to take the trip to the lake without her.

“Nonsense,” Gabriel says, standing next to her hospital bed. He’s left the chair for Adrien, who sits on it with his legs pulled to his chest, chin pressed against his knees. “We’ll stay here with you.”

Adrien says nothing, instead counting the tiny squares on the patterned vinyl floor. It’s been weeks of beeping machines, doctors’ murmured voices, and red-spotted tissues that Emilie never quite manages to hide from Adrien. He knows they’re not going back to the lake this summer.

“Gabriel,” Emilie says. “Adrien has his friend—”

“The person is a complete stranger,” Gabriel says, “and for all we know, they could be working with the paparazzi and trying to get private information from him. Or they could be a predator.”

“It’s not like that,” Adrien mumbles. “He’s my friend.”

“You put bottles in the water, and some person fishes them out and writes little replies,” Gabriel says. “It may be fun, but you don’t have a friend, and neither one of you will miss anything if you don’t write to each other.”

Adrien curls in on himself, hoping his messy bangs cover his stinging eyes. He knows that there’s sense in what his father is saying—Adrien and LC have never had a live conversation, only bottled messages exchanged for a few days every year. And yet, he doesn’t want to admit that their relationship is insignificant. He holds onto the magic of that first summer, when his mother helped his little hands set the bottle afloat, and a kind stranger took the time to respond to his message.

In all his years of being stifled, and lonely, and trapped, Adrien has clung to the magic and freedom he feels whenever he writes to LC.

Paris is photoshoots, and interviews, and hours spent alone reading textbooks; Adrien has to watch what he says, and stand up straight, and mind his manners. But the lake is rolling hills, and naps by the water, and the chance to just sit and _breathe._ LC’s messages are Adrien’s way of taking the lake back to Paris with him—his way of remembering that out there, there’s someone who doesn’t care if Adrien has good posture, or says please and thank you, or aims a perfect smile at the camera.

LC only cares about the words Adrien has written. In a strange, sweet way, despite having never seen Adrien’s face or heard his voice, he knows Adrien better than anyone in Paris.

Gabriel’s words batter the walls of Adrien’s brain, though, like stormy waves crashing against the hull of a ship. He’s right, isn’t he? Adrien doesn’t know LC. LC probably doesn’t consider him a friend.

But then _—_ every year, every message signed _your friend._ Doesn’t that mean something? Or are those just two empty words on a page?

“Gabriel,” Emilie says again. Although she speaks softly, her voice is firm. “Take him to the beach. Those letters are special to him.”

“I don’t have to go,” Adrien mutters, staring at the ground. “Père is right. I’m not really friends with him. They’re just bottled messages.”

Emilie sighs. “Don’t say that, darling. I know the messages make you happy, and there’s still plenty of room in that box of yours.”

Tears heat Adrien’s eyes, and he squeezes them shut, arms wrapped tightly around his legs. How can his mother think about messages in bottles, when some days she’s too tired to write her own name? How can she tell Adrien to leave her for a week for a boy whose face he can’t even see, when the day Adrien leaves might be the last time he sees _her_ face?

He doesn’t want to think these things—he wants to hope that she’ll get better—but he’s not foolish. He’s seen the lines etched into his father’s face, and heard the weary sighs as Nathalie cancels yet another meeting. He’s watched the doctors and nurses carefully paste smiles on their faces, as if they can fool Adrien, who’s known how to fake a smile his whole life.

Despite the dwindling hope in his heart, Adrien knows how this will probably end.

His breath hitches as he holds back a sob. “I’m getting a drink,” he mumbles, and then he hops down from the chair and slips out the door before anyone can stop him.

Standing next to a water cooler, Adrien leans back against the wall and takes a shuddering breath. He doesn’t want to be here right now, in chilly halls, under bright fluorescent lights. He wants to be outside, in fresh air—outside, by the water, where the sun is warm, and the wind rustles through the trees, and there’s a boy waiting _somewhere_ to listen to his hopes and fears.

But LC isn’t here. In fact, he might as well not be real. He can’t be here, beside Adrien, as he struggles not to break down in the hallway. He can’t hold Adrien’s hand, or hug him close as Adrien sits by his mother’s side.

Gabriel could do those things, but he won’t. He’s never been one for physical affection.

Adrien is alone, and LC is just a boy who lives in a bottle, hundreds of kilometers away.

* * *

They don’t go to the lake that summer, and Adrien wears a dark suit in the July heat instead.

* * *

The next summer, when Adrien tentatively broaches the topic of visiting the lake, his father shuts him down. Gabriel refuses to leave the mansion—locked away in his office, forcing Adrien to schedule dinners like meetings—and he forbids Adrien from travelling so far from Paris by himself.

Adrien, for his part, spends most days moving from room to room of the mansion. It’s what he did before, back when his mother was still alive; except it was different back then, when he didn’t feel like he was wandering the halls of a haunted house.

As the end of July approaches—when Adrien would normally pack his things into a suitcase and get on a plane to fly south—he finds himself thinking of the keepsake box stashed in one of his drawers.

Adrien hasn’t read any of LC’s messages since the evening following Emilie’s funeral, when Adrien locked himself in his room and turned to his box of letters for comfort. After that, he couldn’t bring himself to read the words LC had written; they summoned memories of that first summer, when Adrien’s mother led him into the water and helped him send his bottled message.

A year later, though, the pain has dulled, and Adrien feels a new ache in his chest: the feeling that he’s lost LC.

Why hadn’t Adrien left a phone number that last summer? An email address? His real name? Something, anything so that LC could have found him—because even if LC ended up never reaching out to Adrien, that would have been better than the constant wondering, the persistent what-if.

What if LC _had_ contacted Adrien? Then Adrien wouldn’t be sitting alone in his room at the end of July, feeling like he’s lost the only two people who ever understood him completely.

Adrien’s fingers twitch, curling and uncurling, and after a minute of sitting tense on his bed, he leaps up and kneels by his drawer. Hesitantly, almost reverently, he opens it and removes the keepsake box, then sets it on his mattress and lifts the lid.

Rolled-up messages sit stacked inside, all tied with different-colored ribbons. Each color is for a different year, but the sight of the precise bows—all nimbly tied by his mother—brings a quiet wave of grief washing over Adrien.

That last summer, she’d insisted on tying a bow around Adrien’s message from LC, even though her face was pale and she had to lie down afterwards.

Adrien’s fingers hover over the tidy bows. Untying any one of them feels like unraveling a memory of his mother; and so he grabs the messily-tied message instead, the one he’d redone himself when he opened the message after the funeral.

He sits down with his back against the bed and unrolls the message, eyes roving across the familiar words.

_I don’t think I have any friends like Chloé. She sounds…interesting. I’m sorry you feel lonely, though. Maybe you should ask your dad if you can go to public school. It might not be as good as having tutors, but you’d make friends that way._

At the time—the summer before Adrien turned twelve—he hadn’t understood why LC thought that Adrien sounded lonely. In hindsight, though, Adrien knows that LC was right.

Chloé, fellow models, the few kids Adrien has met through fencing…Adrien has never felt like he could get close to any of them. He’s tried, of course. He’s imagined that he’s penning a letter to LC, and attempted to think of things to say that way. But every word he thinks of feels too personal, too strange, too uninteresting. Why would anyone want to hear about Adrien’s random thoughts or silly dreams?

Now, almost fifteen years old, Adrien has never felt lonelier.

He rolls ups the message and reties it, doing his best to replicate the neat bows his mother created. The ribbon droops, a bit lopsided, but it’s the best he can do, so he puts the message back in the box and closes the lid.

Adrien doesn’t think that he can replace LC. There’s something magical about the fact that they’ve never actually met, and have gotten to know each other so deeply with just a bottle crossing a lake. Nothing can replicate that bond, and any friends Adrien makes now, he won’t be able to open his heart to them that much.

But Adrien’s mother is gone, and he’s lost LC, and he can’t live his days cooped up alone in the mansion. While that works for his father, it will never work for him.

Adrien puts the box away again and then exits his room, calling for Nathalie as the door falls shut behind him.

* * *

“So, are you guys going anywhere for vacation this summer?”

Adrien sighs and sits back in his desk chair, spinning it in a circle. His friend from lycée, Nino, watches him from the phone propped up on his desk. “Probably not,” Adrien says, as the room rotates around him. “We haven’t gone back to the lake since my mom died, and the last time I brought it up to my father, we had a fight.”

He remembers that conversation too well, despite his efforts to forget: the way Gabriel fixed his cold eyes on Adrien, and accused him of disrespecting his mother, and said that they should just throw away Adrien’s stupid bottled messages, if they were somehow more important to Adrien than Emilie.

“There are other places besides the lake, dude,” Nino says.

“Yeah.” Adrien’s mouth twists, and he slumps forward on the desk. “I don’t know. My father hardly ever leaves the house, but I’m not supposed to travel without him, either.”

“That’s annoying.” Nino tugs on the bill of his cap, adjusting it. “Why can’t your dad just let you go enjoy yourself?”

“I don’t know,” Adrien says. “Maybe I’m not supposed to enjoy myself over the summer. This is when my mom…you know. It’s like a period of mourning.”

Nino’s nose wrinkles, the way it always does when Adrien attempts to explain his strange home life. “I guess. But I still say you should have fun over the summer. Forget what your dad says.”

“I wish it were that easy,” Adrien murmurs. “What about you? Any fun plans?”

As Nino talks about music gigs he’s lined up for the summer, Adrien’s eyes wander over to the drawer where his box of messages is.

This past year, Adrien hasn’t thought about LC as much—not since Gabriel folded and allowed Adrien to attend public school. Now, Adrien finds himself occupied with homework, class projects, other things. He still thinks of LC sometimes, but he’s managed to stave off the loneliness, for the most part.

He hasn’t managed to fill the void, though. Even his friendship with Nino—who is, undoubtedly, Adrien’s closest friend—doesn’t come close to the open-hearted bond Adrien had with LC. Adrien keeps so many things to himself. He doesn’t tell Nino that he hates modeling, or that he’s angry at his father, and he definitely doesn’t tell him about the nameless boy he left behind at the lake. As hard as Adrien tries, he can’t bring himself to let anyone that close.

Part of the unspoken agreement, reached when Adrien and Nathalie approached Gabriel about public school, was that Adrien shouldn’t mention the lake now that he has school friends. It’s silly to complain about a glorified pen pal, when Adrien sits in a classroom full of flesh-and-blood people every day. What’s the point of clinging to a boy Adrien never really knew?

He did know him, though. And that boy knew Adrien.

“I think you should ask your dad to let you go on vacation,” Nino says, and Adrien snaps back to the present. “I mean, you model all the time for him. All that work should deserve a break, right?”

Adrien sighs. “Yeah. I guess…I have a cousin in England. I could stay with him and my aunt, maybe.”

Nino quietly whoops. “That’s more like it!”

Silently, though, Adrien mourns that the Thames won’t carry any messages to the lake in southern France.

* * *

The next summer, as usual, there’s no talk of vacations: only photoshoots, and business trips, and meetings that nearly put Adrien to sleep. And as always, of course, he’s expected to keep up with his studies.

Sighing, Adrien rests his fingers on the keys of his piano. He’s been practicing pieces for almost an hour now, with no one there to listen _,_ and it’s getting exhausting. What’s the point of always improving his skills, if his father hardly ever bothers to hear him play? What’s the point of playing music, if there’s never anyone to share it with?

_Some people play music for themselves, but I prefer playing it for others. Isn’t it better to play something and watch someone smile, or laugh, or cry? Maybe I’m strange for thinking that, though. I know some people get stage fright._

Those are lines from LC’s last message, which Adrien has memorized after reading it so many times.

Adrien understands exactly what LC meant; playing music was different when Emilie was still alive. Adrien would learn songs from movies that she liked, and make up ditties to go along with stories she told. She would laugh and smile as his fingers danced across the piano, and when Adrien played one of her favorites—one of those slow piano songs that built up to full, rich chords—her eyes would become misty, and she would smile and thank him for playing.

Hesitantly, Adrien plays the first few notes of “Time After Time.” He remembers watching that black-and-white film without subtitles as a child, back when he hadn’t quite learned English yet. Some words went over his head, but Sinatra’s voice, and the way his mother’s eyes shone as he sang—he understood those things. That year, for her birthday, he’d learned how to play it for her; and of course, Gabriel had questioned why Adrien hadn’t actually _gotten_ her anything, but Emilie hushed him, saying that Adrien’s gift was more than enough.

Adrien stops, eyes stinging. He doesn’t remember the next notes, and the music is bringing back memories that he’d rather not confront.

He idly plays notes for a few seconds, and then his hands slip into another familiar tune. It takes him a full minute to remember what the song is, and then he realizes: it’s one of the compositions he created based on music that LC shared with him. Years have passed since Adrien last played it, but he can still more or less find his way through the tune.

LC would be around eighteen by now, out of high school. Adrien wonders if he still lives on a boat. How are his mother and sister? What songs has he written in the past few years? Is his hair still blue, or has he let it go back to its natural color?

Does he ever think of Adrien, the way Adrien thinks of him?

Because even when Adrien leaves the messages locked in that keepsake box, LC finds ways to slip into his life. Adrien will remember a phrase and think it’s from a novel he read, only to realize it’s from one of LC’s messages. He’ll play a tune on the piano—like he’s doing now—and realize belatedly that it’s one of the songs LC wrote down. LC is always there, lingering in Adrien’s life, and Adrien suspects that he’ll never truly disappear from his mind.

There’s a knock on the door, and Adrien snatches his hands away from the keys, afraid to be caught slacking off. “Come in.”

The door opens, and Nathalie steps inside. “You have a photoshoot scheduled at the lake.”

Adrien stares at her with wide eyes. “You mean… _the_ lake? And, wait, a—a photoshoot?”

Nathalie nods. “It’s next weekend. We’ll fly down and stay at a hotel a few kilometers away, and you’ll be back in Paris by Monday.”

“We’re not staying on the lake?” Adrien says. “And why are we doing a photoshoot there?”

“Your father has business connections in the area,” Nathalie says. “The scenery is also excellent, and we can’t get similar shots in Paris. I’ll accompany you, since your father is staying here.”

“I guess this could be a vacation for you,” Adrien jokes.

“I suppose,” Nathalie says. “Though I’m not a fan of the outdoors.” She shrugs. “I’ve added it to your calendar. Make sure you’re packed by Thursday morning.”

With that, she turns and shuts the door behind her, leaving Adrien alone at the piano.

He stares at the keys and watches as they blur in front of him. After all this time, he’s returning to the lake? Just like that? It feels abrupt. Almost profane, somehow. Gabriel isn’t even attempting to honor the sanctity of the place where their family used to go, where Adrien forged a friendship in the water. He’s callously turned it into a photo op instead.

There’s no use getting sentimental, though. LC is long gone, and probably doesn’t even remember Adrien at this point.

Eyes stinging, Adrien shuts the fallboard on the piano and closes his eyes, wishing he could shut away his memories as easily.

* * *

“We’ll take a ten-minute break,” the photographer says, switching off her camera. Adrien is embarrassed to admit that he never caught her name; he’d been too distracted when he arrived at the lake.

When he first stepped out of the car, he’d expected it to feel magical or nostalgic. Instead, the place feels not-quite-right, like a movie set approximation of the lake. The water’s blue isn’t how Adrien remembers it, and the hills don’t stand as tall as he thought. And it feels wrong without his mother by his side, as if Adrien is erasing Emilie by setting foot on the sand without her.

Maybe that’s why his father didn’t want to come here.

Adrien walks back to his trailer—another thing that feel wrong, foreign—and ducks inside to change into an old t-shirt and pair of sandals. That done, he switches off the tracking app on his phone and grabs his backpack. Inside is a complimentary wine bottle that he’d emptied down the sink the night before. Adrien has already plugged a cork in the top, sealing his message inside.

He waits until no one is watching, which is surprisingly easy; the people working with him are much less attentive than the paparazzi. Then, with his backpack slung over his shoulder, Adrien creeps into a nearby copse of trees, following the map on his phone.

As twigs snap under Adrien’s shoes, and the dot on his map gets closer to the shore he remembers, his brain seems to float above the trees. He never actually imagined that he’d return to the lake, to the exact spot he remembers, to try to send another message. He feels like he’s dreaming.

It’s foolish, of course. Someone else will probably find the message with Adrien’s phone number and start sending him spam. Then, even though Adrien is about to enter his last year of high school, Nathalie will sit him down for a three-hour lesson about cybersecurity.

The trees give away to a grassy slope, and Adrien keeps following his map, feeling the terrain shift beneath his feet. It soon becomes sand slipping beneath his soles, and he pauses to look up ahead.

In the distance, across another expanse of grass, is the shore he remembers.

Adrien forces himself to walk slowly so that he doesn’t draw attention to himself. This part of the lake has always been fairly empty, but there are a few people around, and several boats dot the water. The quiet, at least, hasn’t changed.

But everything else has. Adrien is almost seventeen, less than a year away from graduating high school. He’s lost his mother since he was last here, and made friends with people whose faces he hadn’t known back then. Most of all, he’s carried around the memories of this place for years, weighed down by wondering what would have happened if he’d just written his phone number in that last message.

Heart thumping, Adrien treks across the sand and through the grass, and then he’s there: staring at _that_ beach, where he once spent hours daydreaming about magic and fairytales, and walked along the water with his hand in his mother’s, and sent bottled messages to a boy with initials for a name.

A tear rolls down Adrien’s cheek, and he swipes it away. After another moment of hesitation, he sets his backpack down and removes his sandals. It’s been so long since he felt the sand slither between his toes, or felt the cool water wash against his calves.

Feet bare, Adrien grabs the bottle from his backpack and takes the remaining few steps forward.

Eyes closed, he smiles and curls his toes in the sand. The water bubbles quietly in front of him, and birds sing somewhere in the distance. If he really listens, he can hear the occasional whoop from people out on the water.

“You should probably recycle that,” a voice says. 

Adrien’s eyes fly open, and he spins to face the speaker. “I…”

The sight of the stranger takes his breath away. The boy looks about Adrien’s age, or maybe a bit older, judging by the breadth of his shoulders and the sharp line of his jaw. Pale, lightly-freckled arms peek out from the sleeves of his white t-shirt, and slightly pink cheeks crease with a smile. His hair, so dark that it’s nearly black, is tousled—and not the kind of _artful tousling_ that Adrien’s stylists do with his hair, but beautiful and wild, as if the boy has let the lake style his hair instead of products.

And the boy’s eyes and the tips of his hair are the same brilliant blue, somehow brighter than the lake. It’s his eyes that captivate Adrien, holding his attention and making his mind stutter and slow.

“What?” Adrien says.

“You should recycle the bottle,” the boy says. “You could get in trouble for littering.”

“Uh, no, I was just…” Adrien trails off, because what kind of fool sends a bottled message via a lake? It was cute back when he was eight and didn’t know how lakes worked. At seventeen, though, he just looks like an idiot. “I…found this?”

“Nice,” the boy says. “It looks like you found a message in a bottle. Are you going to read it?”

Adrien grimaces. “I, um…” He rubs the back of his neck, cheeks burning as the boy stares at him. “Actually, I was going to send it.”

“Oh.” The boy tilts his head to the side, lips twitching toward a smile. “You know this is a lake, right?”

“I know,” Adrien says. “I—it’s a long story. I used to send bottled messages here when I was younger, and when I sent my first one, I didn’t realize it would stay here. I thought it would go to Toulouse or something.”

“I hate to break it to you,” the boy says, “but I don’t think your messages left the lake.”

“Well, I know that _now.”_

“Hey,” the boy says, holding up his hands. “No harm meant. I think it’s cute.”

“Really?” Adrien says. “Doesn’t it sound stupid? Even once I realized how lakes work, I still kept sending the messages.”

There’s a moment of silence where the boy glances out at the water, a breeze from the lake twirling strands of his hair. “Was someone reading them?”

“Someone was responding,” Adrien says. “I…um, I think. Unless one of my parents was setting me up. Wow. Um, that never occurred to me until now. If that’s the case, I feel kind of stupid since—”

“I believe you,” the boy says. He holds out a hand. “I’m Luka.”

Tentatively, Adrien takes his hand. Luka’s palm is warm against his, callouses scraping Adrien’s skin as they touch. Adrien’s so distracted by the feeling of Luka’s hand that he forgets to actually _shake_ it, and Luka laughs good-naturedly as he releases Adrien’s palm.

“Sorry,” Adrien says. “I’m, uh—I’m Adrien.”

“I figured.”

“Right,” Adrien mutters. “I guess my face is kind of recognizable.”

“I’ve never seen your face,” Luka says, smiling. “The bottle gave it away.”

Adrien automatically hugs the bottle against his chest. “How?”

Luka raises an eyebrow, then turns to stare at the water again. “My family owns a houseboat on the lake, just around the bend.” He points out at the lake, to where it curves out of sight behind the trees. “Sometimes we take a smaller boat out on the water, though.”

“That sounds nice,” Adrien says. Gabriel had never let Adrien or Emilie go out on the lake, claiming that it was unnecessarily dangerous. “But…what does that have to do with me being Adrien?”

“Right,” Luka says. “Sorry, I guess that doesn’t make much sense. When I was nine, we were in this part of the lake, and I saw a bottle in the water. I fished it out because I thought someone was littering, and then I realized there was a message inside.” He turns to Adrien, his eyes warm despite their cool hue. “My last name is Couffaine.”

Automatically, as Adrien does every time he meets someone whose name begins with an _L,_ he converts that to initials: LC.

Adrien nearly drops the bottle. “You—then—wait, really?”

“That’s my name.”

“No,” Adrien says, “I mean…it’s…” His mind spins with disbelief. “Are you…?”

“You have callouses on your fingers,” Luka notes. “Did you take up guitar? Or is that from fencing?”

“You’re LC?”

“Is that okay?” Luka says. “I don’t have to be.”

“No!” Adrien says. He barely resists lunging forward. “I want you! I mean, I want you to be him.”

“Well, then,” Luka says. “That’s me.”

Adrien feels like he’s falling, spiraling in joy, and so he latches on to doubt to stop himself—because surely he’s not allowed to be this happy about something. Surely, any second now, the universe will snatch this away from him.

“Prove it,” Adrien says. “Anyone could know that I fence. That information’s on the internet.”

Instead of being offended, Luka just smiles softly. “Let me see…in your first letter, you were hoping that I was a wizard or a prince, and you thought your message had travelled hundreds of kilometers away. You like cats, and when you were nine, you’d studied English, Spanish, and Chinese. That’s also when you started fencing.”

Adrien blinks. “That’s—right.”

“You didn’t have many friends when you were younger because you were homeschooled, so you spent a lot of time with your family,” Luka says. “Specifically your mother. You always sounded kind of sad about how busy your father was.”

Without meaning to, Adrien takes a step back. When he wrote those things and set them adrift on the waves, that was one thing—but being confronted with someone he’s never really met, and realizing that this person knows Adrien’s most personal thoughts from his childhood, makes him feel a bit like he’s been shoved underwater.

“I’m sorry,” Luka says. “I guess it’s a bit weird for me to know all of that.”

“I…I’m fine,” Adrien says. “It’s just hard to connect the person to the paper. I always knew that someone was reading my messages, but actually _seeing_ the person is another thing.”

“I understand,” Luka says. “I can pretend I never read the messages, if you want.”

“No!” Adrien says. “I would never want to erase what we have. I mean—what we…had. If we had something.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I’m not lonely and creepy. I swear I have friends now! I’ve been going to high school and everything.”

Luka smiles, and Adrien wonders how he can keep doing that while Adrien spouts nonsense. “That’s good,” he says. “I remember telling you…well, I didn’t really tell you, I guess—”

“You suggested that I go to public school,” Adrien says. “And a few summers ago, I was feeling…restless, so I took your advice.”

 _Lonely._ The right word is lonely—and yet, despite years of confiding in LC, Adrien can’t bring himself to say those personal things to Luka.

“I’m glad it worked out.” For the first time during their conversation, Luka grimaces. “Sorry. I’m even more awkward in-person.”

“I don’t think so,” Adrien says. “Me, though…wait! Aren’t you upset with me?”

“Upset?” Luka says. “Why would I be?”

“I disappeared on you!” Adrien says. “LC—I mean, Luka, I’m so sorry. Our trip ended early that summer, and I didn’t get a chance to send you my phone number or anything.”

“Oh,” Luka says. “It’s fine. I wondered what happened, but…you _had_ mentioned that your mother was sick, so…” He fiddles with one of the multicolored bracelets on his wrist. “I did wonder why you didn’t come back after that, but that’s life. People come and go.”

“And come back,” Adrien says, allowing himself a small smile. “I’m sorry, Luka. She got really sick that summer, and she died the following year. My father decided that we wouldn’t come back here after that.”

“Adrien,” Luka says, his voice mostly a whisper. “I’m so sorry.”

Adrien shrugs, avoiding Luka’s eyes. “It’s fine. It’s not like you know me, really.”

“All these years, I hoped nothing bad had happened,” Luka says. “I probably thought about you more than I should have, but…anyway, I didn’t want to think that you’d lost her.”

“It’s fine,” Adrien repeats, eyes stinging. Because he can remember standing here with his mother’s hand in his, can remember the sound of her humming, and the slightly-sweet scent of her sunscreen. “I’m not that sad anymore. But being here reminds me of her.”

“Do you want a hug?” Luka asks.

Adrien does—although it’s not just for comfort. He’s wondered for years what this boy’s arms would feel like, how tightly he would hug Adrien, whether he’s the sort of person to stroke someone’s hair while he holds them. “I’m okay,” Adrien says. “Anyway, it’s good to see you. After that summer, I kind of felt like I lost both of you, so…this is nice.”

The words feel stupid and inadequate. This isn’t just _nice._ This is fateful. What are the chances, really, that Adrien and his mystery correspondent would meet on this beach, on this day?

“What brings you back?” Luka asks. “Did your father change his mind?”

“Not really,” Adrien says. “He’s back in Paris. I’m here for a photoshoot.”

Luka raises his eyebrows. “What’s the photoshoot for?”

“You really don’t know?” Adrien asks, and Luka shakes his head. “For my father’s fashion brand.”

“So you’re a model,” Luka says. “That’s fitting.”

“Because I’m rich and out of touch with the world?”

“No,” Luka says. Adrien notices that his cheeks seem a bit more flushed than before. “Never mind. Which brand do you model for? I don’t know much about that sort of thing, so I might not know it.”

“Everyone knows it,” Adrien says. He sighs, fist curled tightly around the neck of his bottle. “But the image they promote—that’s not me. I don’t want you to think I’m the artificial person you see on billboards.”

“You’ve been on billboards?” Luka asks, eyes widening. “Sorry. Adrien, I’m not going to think that. I’ve known you for years, in a way.”

In a way. Will that be enough, though, once Adrien says his name? Or will Luka fill in all the blanks with wrong answers, leaving Adrien with a friendship full of red marks?

“You don’t have to tell me,” Luka says. “But I don’t care about fame or things like that. I wrote you messages for all those years because of the things you said, not because of your name.”

Adrien still hesitates. He could keep this to himself, and walk away, and Luka might not find out who he is for months. Or Luka might google every famous French model named Adrien—but that doesn’t seem like his style. Luka has always struck Adrien as thoughtful and kind; he wouldn’t search for information that Adrien wants to keep secret.

Luka shakes his head. “It’s not impor—”

“Agreste,” Adrien blurts out, and the word feels far too loud on the quiet beach. He half-expects the paparazzi to suddenly sprout from the sand and water. “I’m Adrien Agreste.”

“Oh,” Luka says. “Yeah. I’ve heard of you.”

“You…really don’t care?”

“No,” Luka says. “I already told you, fame doesn’t matter to me.” He snaps his fingers, and for the first time, Adrien notices the rings adorning them. “Oh, didn’t you voice a character in that superhero movie? I took my sister to see that when it first came out.”

Adrien grimaces. “You saw that?”

“Yeah.” For the first time, Luka grins, and it’s wide and bright, a hundred times more beautiful than Adrien could have imagined. “I heard your voice without even realizing it was you.”

Some small part of Adrien’s brain whispers, _That’s kind of romantic._ He does his best to bury the thought. “So…can I still just be Adrien to you?”

“You’ve always been just Adrien,” Luka says. He clears his throat, his cheeks now bright red. Adrien thinks it might not be sunburn. “Literally. That’s all you signed the messages as.”

“And you were LC,” Adrien says. “Why didn’t you write Luka?”

“Oh,” Luka says. “Well, in the beginning, I worried…what if we ran into each other, and you realized that your bottle hadn’t even left the lake? I didn’t want to ruin the magic.”

“And later on?”

“Actually, I was going to tell you the summer that you left early,” Luka says. “But I never got the chance.”

“You did, though,” Adrien says. “You’re telling me now, aren’t you?”

“That’s true,” Luka says. “And now you have the chance to give me your phone number, if you still want to.”

Adrien’s brain chooses that moment to abandon him, moving as slowly as the recreational boats that laze across the lake. Tongue twisting uselessly, he thrusts the bottled message forward, holding it out to Luka.

Luka stares at it for a moment, his dark eyebrows furrowed. Then, with a light laugh, he reaches out and takes the bottle. “That works, too.”

“Wait!” Adrien says, as the smooth glass leaves his hand. “I, um…it _is_ written on the message, but I can just type it into your phone.”

Luka holds up the bottle, peering at the paper furled inside. “I don’t know. I’m curious about what this says.”

“Can I…have that back, maybe?” Adrien asks, making tiny grabby gestures with his fingers. “I kind of thought I’d never get to speak to you again, so I wrote some very stupid things.”

“I doubt they’re stupid if you wrote them.”

Adrien cringes as the phrase _I’m sorry I never got to see your ocean-blue eyes_ rings through his brain. “Um. Yeah. No. I’ll take that back now.”

After a moment of hesitation—during which Adrien worries that Luka is going to laugh maniacally and run away with the bottle—Luka hands it back to him. “I guess I’ll keep the messages I wrote for you, then.”

“Right, the—wait, the what?” Adrien asks. The red in Luka’s cheeks has spread down to his neck and up to his ears, and there’s no mistaking that it’s a blush. “You have a message for me?”

“Messages,” Luka mutters.

“Why did you write them for me if I wasn’t here?”

As soon as Adrien asks the question, he realizes the answer: because Luka thought he might come back eventually.

Luka scratches his nose. “I think you know why.”

“I—right, I—um, well,” Adrien says. “I…guess I could trade this message for yours?”

“One message for five?” Luka says. “That doesn’t sound like a fair trade.”

“I could write you more?”

Luka’s lips curve into another smile, and Adrien swears the water sparkles a little brighter from it. “That would be sweet of you. But, no. I’ll give you all five. They’re a little embarrassing, but—”

“Don’t worry about that,” Adrien says. “I think we’re even, in that respect.”

“That’s reassuring.” Luka reaches into his pocket and pulls out a phone, then swipes his finger around the screen. “Here. If you want to give me your number?”

Adrien tucks the bottle under his arm and accepts Luka’s phone, then meticulously enters his number into Luka’s contacts. He triple-checks it—even murmuring it out loud to make sure it’s right—before handing it back to Luka.

Luka smiles and types something on the phone. A moment later, Adrien’s buzzes in his pocket.

“I sent you mine,” Luka says. “So…”

“So.” Adrien clears his throat. That’s that: he and LC finally have each other’s numbers, after all these years. “Uh, you…graduated high school, I guess?”

“Right,” Luka says. “And I’m moving to Paris in August, actually.”

“You are?” Adrien says. He involuntarily steps forward, compelled to reach out and touch Luka—and just barely resisting. “I’m still in Paris.”

“I hoped you’d say that,” Luka says. “There are a lot of music opportunities there, and also…maybe it’s stupid, but I figured that if fate brought us together once, maybe it would do it again.”

Adrien grins. “I don’t think it’s stupid. That’s the same reason I came to this beach today.”

“It worked,” Luka says.

“Yeah. It did.” Adrien fiddles with the cork poking out of the bottle, then adds, “Music, you said? I…don’t suppose I could hear you play sometime? I’ve kind of been dreaming about that for a while.”

“Sure,” Luka says. “And we have a keyboard at the houseboat, if you want to play something, too.”

“We could play together,” Adrien realizes, with a childlike awe in his voice. His cheeks burn. “I—I mean, we don’t have to, but…”

“I’d like that,” Luka says. “We could go back to the boat now, if you want? I think my mom and sister are out, but I’d be happy to introduce you when they get back.”

Hearing Luka play guitar, meeting his family, seeing where he lives—even though it’s not hiking mountains or sailing oceans, the thought fills Adrien with a sense of wonder. It quickly evaporates, though, when he remembers why he’s at the lake.

“Photoshoot,” Adrien says. “I kind of sneaked off, and they’ve definitely noticed I’m gone by now—in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if my father’s assistant is on her way here.”

“Oh,” Luka says. “That’s okay. Maybe another time? How long are you staying here?”

“Only a couple days,” Adrien says. “And my father didn’t leave much free time in my schedule. I guess I could sneak off in the evenings…although, I’m probably in trouble for sneaking off today, and they might not let me out of their sight again.” He frowns to himself. “On second thought, let’s go.”

“Are you sure?” Luka asks. “I don’t want to get in trouble for kidnapping Adrien Agreste.”

“It’s just Adrien, remember?” Adrien says.

“Somehow, I don’t think that excuse will work when your father’s assistant comes looking for you.”

“Besides, you’re not kidnapping me,” Adrien adds. “You’re saving me. Just like a prince.” He winks. “I guess I was right about that part, after all.”

“I don’t know,” Luka says. “I’m not really that prince-like.”

“That’s debatable,” Adrien says. “But if you’re not, that’s okay. I prefer _ministers_ to princes, anyway.”

Luka groans. “I guess I didn’t imagine that misspelling.”

“Nope,” Adrien says.

His stomach flutters at Luka’s sheepishness, and he wonders what would happen if he teased Luka a bit more—if he really _did_ tell him that his eyes are beautiful like the water, or that Adrien has dreamed of feeling their hands intertwined just as much as he’s dreamed about seeing Luka’s hands on a guitar.

Then again, there’s plenty of time for that. Luka is coming to Paris. After all these years, Adrien can finally show Luka around the city, introduce him to the people he knows, sit and talk to him for hours.

Adrien’s eyes fall to Luka’s hand, and he’s struck by the urge to take it and see how it fits in his.

“Something wrong?” Luka asks.

“No,” Adrien says, eyes flicking back up to Luka’s. “Just a silly thought.”

“Okay,” Luka says. “I wouldn’t judge you if you said it, though.”

Adrien takes a deep breath. It should be easy. He’s written this sort of thing to Luka before, and Luka has shared similar thoughts. Adrien still remembers how Luka once said that Adrien had inspired him to write songs, and Luka hadn’t seemed embarrassed about sharing _that_.

Of course, Adrien’s face had burned when he read the words and wondered what sort of songs they were.

“Well,” Adrien says. He gestures awkwardly to one of Luka’s hands. “I kind of…wanted to see…uh.” At a loss, he holds out his hand again. “I forgot to shake, the first time.”

Luka laughs—the sound is clear and refreshing, like cool water against hot skin—and takes Adrien’s hand in his. “Alright. Here’s your second chance.”

Adrien squeezes Luka’s hand, memorizing the weight and slight scratchiness of his palm. His eyes fix on their joined hands, tan skin against pale, and the sight feels _different_ , somehow; it’s as if their hands are supposed to be like this, warm in each other’s grasp.

“You’re still not shaking it,” Luka observes.

“I guess I just wanted to hold your hand, instead,” Adrien says. He pauses, and then the connotation of his words sinks in. “I mean! That sounds, um…I just meant, for so long, I only knew you on paper, so being able to feel you—in a normal way, I mean—uh…yeah.”

Luka raises an eyebrow. “What would be an _abnormal_ way?”

“Oh, uh, ha.” Adrien glances out at the water, wondering if one of the boats will come rescue him. “Something weird, like…you know. Kissing or something. I wasn’t suggesting that! But saying I want to _feel you_ —right. It sounded weird, is all.”

“If you say so,” Luka says. Smiling, he switches the hand that’s holding Adrien’s, then lowers their hands and intertwines them. “How’s that? Do I feel like a real person?”

“Y-yeah,” Adrien says, face burning hotter than before. “What about me?”

“Very real,” Luka says. “You feel like…Adrien.”

“The fragrance?” Adrien says drily.

“The what?”

“I’ll fill you in later,” Adrien says. “So, what’s a good place to get food around here? I only ever ate hotel food and fancy restaurant meals.”

“Come on,” Luka says, tugging on Adrien’s hand. “I think I know a few places you’ll like.”

They’ve walked for a minute or two, the sand turning to grass that tickles Adrien’s feet, when he realizes that he’s forgotten to put his sandals back on. “Oh,” he says. “My feet.”

“Hm?” Luka glances down. “Right. I guess you need your bag, too.”

Adrien looks over his shoulder at the shoes and backpack, already specks in the distance. “No,” he says. “I’m sure Nathalie will find them, anyway. Like I said, she’s probably already following me.”

“In that case,” Luka says, leaning so close that Adrien can see the faint freckles on his cheeks, “we’d better move faster.”

With a smile, he squeezes Adrien’s hand and takes off running—and Adrien, laughing and cheering, lets himself be pulled along the water’s edge.

**Author's Note:**

> You can read my Lukadrien June fic for Day 14 (Lost) [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24728053) and my fic for Day 15 (Home) [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24846865%22).


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